[BC] HD Radio -- Folks we have to get it right!

[Bill Sepmeier]

Bob Orban said:

>Rich -- Yes, you do. And you repeat, and you repeat, and you repeat, and 
>you repeat.>
>I read this list mostly because I am trying to learn stuff I wouldn't hear 
>about otherwise.
>You've made your point, about HD Radio And you've made it. And you've made 
>it. And you've made it.

Bob,

The problem is, IBUZ just sucks.  It isn't "HD."  It's more like Steve 
Martin's dog in that old movie "The Jerk."   (I just heard the adjacent 
channel noise on AM IBUZ yesterday when in Denver - God, there goes the 
entire band!  Try to get "scan" or "seek" to work witout being BLASTED with 
noise!!   FM IBUZ sounds like FM always has, only with BER dropout, a far 
more irritating feature than multipath noise is.  The AM band is ruined by 
it.  Progress? Please.

WHY is it that it's this late in the monopoly game before some of this 
industry's reputable players have realized how substandard IBUZ really is, 
as presently implemented? Is it because innovators like yourself have 
accepted a future that is less than today's reality, in a quest to sell 
add-on algorithyms that might silk-purse this sow's ear?  Is the need to 
sell more processors and widgets so great that you'll compromise real 
quality for net-present-value-zero quarterly accounting - even if the 
"improvement" sinks the "ship" that has been our industry as consumers 
reject still substantial bit error drop out, limited bandwidth and 
telco-grade audio on secondary channels in favor of XM, Sirius and superior 
implementations of digital radio?

IBUZ, as Rich has aptly named it, was a political development, never a 
"superior technology," and is not a demonstrable improvement in quality or 
service over present or past analog; not based on what I've listened to 
anyway.... not with its "CD Quality" (LOL!!) audio streams running at 
less-than ISDN rates at best and with the continuing problems encountered 
with moving platform decoding ... it offers nothing new to the consumer 
except large additional costs and little to anyone else - except the 
licensers and manufacturers of IBUZ components.  Frankly, I'm a bit 
surprised that you, of all people in this business, a guy who made FM and AM 
sound as good as uncompressed digital years ago, has "adopted" such a 
science experiment so readily.  If your processors sounded as marginal  over 
the years as IBUZ does today you'd not be as well known or wealthy ... so 
why hang your hat now on this almost dreadful turn of events called IBUZ?

IMHO, maybe if Rich repeats himself enough, people will wake up and see that 
we're being "had" by a bunch of Reno gamblers and insiders - political folks 
interested in the monopoly money they might make instead of a viable 
industry that serves the public and it's own shareholders with quality 
broadcast services, not this "widget du jour" called IBUZ.

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